Ian McShane Joins Patrick Wilson As A Violent Ex-Sheriff In The Man On Carrion Road

Spanish filmmaker Gonzalo López-Gallego hasn’t exactly made a huge splash here in the U.S., with last year’s slow-but-worthy Open Grave failing to reach wide audiences and 2011’s Apollo 18 being one of the most disappointing films I’ve ever seen. But both of those films had strong concepts, and his next film, The Man on Carrion Road, sounds just as interesting from the offset, especially now that Ian McShane has signed on to join The Conjuring’s Patrick Wilson in the violent thriller, which will be produced by Atlas Independent.

While McShane is arguably always more enjoyable as the lawless badass, Deadline reports he’ll be playing a retired sheriff in The Man on Carrion Road, albeit one that doesn’t mind dealing out an asswhipping in place of a calm and considered conversation. He will team up with the town’s new sheriff (Wilson) to go on the hunt for a ruthless cartel member who has made a habit of butchering different members of the town’s population. I quite like that there’s not a lot of room for mystery in this one, and hopefully it will be a good old hardcore good guys vs. bad guys flick. I can’t wait to see who they nab to play the killer.

The pic, written by newcomer Nils Lyew, has only been in development for less than a year, but it’s already seen a switch in its lead, as Wilson replaced Justified’s Timothy Olyphant last October. How amazing would it have been for those two Deadwood actors to reteam on something like this? Wilson will almost certainly do a good job, though being rugged isn’t exactly his strong suit.

McShane didn’t really have a lot going on in 2013, starring only in Brian Singer’s rather forgettable fairy tale Jack the Giant Slayer. But he recently finished filming his part in Brett Ratner’s upcoming summer tentpole Hercules with Dwayne Johnson, and he also stars with Nick Frost and Rashida Jones in James Griffiths’ all-star dancing comedy Cuban Fury, as well as Spanish director Daniel Monzón’s dramatic thriller El Niño. 2014 will be a good year.

Production will begin on The Man on Carrion Road this April in Utah, and I guess we can expect López-Gallego to take on his next project, the South American mystery Sanctuary, at some point after that.

Because no talk of McShane could possibly be had without using the word cocksucker, here’s an extremely NSFW montage of that word’s near countless appearances on Deadwood, many of which were uttered by McShane himself. Have fun!